


Like herding Penguins

by GreatRedNorth



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animal Transformation, Crack, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreatRedNorth/pseuds/GreatRedNorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott loves his job.  He literally spends his days herding Penguins.  (It's kind of like herding cats. Which he also herds. Carefully.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like herding Penguins

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Wrangler](https://archiveofourown.org/works/899591) by [james](https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james). 



> So this is pure crack. Inspired by and written within the wacky, wonderful world of James' "Wrangler". Read it. You'll thank me.

Scott has, in his opinion, the best job in Pittsburgh sports.  He’s the Assistant Facilities Manager / Lead Wrangler for the Pittsburgh Penguins: basically, he hangs at a hockey rink and takes care of bros and their space all day long, and gets paid well to do it.  Sure, he went to college, and maybe this job doesn’t really require a college degree, but it’s still awesome.  He works with great people.  The rest of the guys in the facilities department, the equipment guys, the players and coaches, even the senior management and executive types are all pretty cool.  He gets to travel with the team, which he admits is kind of like (what he imagines) being in the Navy is like: you join up to see the world, but what you get is an in-depth tour of hockey rinks and hotel rooms.  Same scenery, different town.  So sometimes that gets old, but it’s still cool and he still loves his job.

 

Normally the Lead Wrangler for a sports team is one of the equipment guys.  But the Penguins are a little different.  Scott has his own staff of four, including two who he stole from the Pittsburgh Zoo a few years back, and he needs them.  Things aren’t as nuts on the Penguins as they are on the Red Wings: however voluntary, Jimmy Howard still turns into a freakin’ polar bear, and all their Zamboni guys have to know how to use a dart gun for those nights after a really bad loss. The Capitals have it bad, too: Ovechkin the sea otter may be cute, but he’s just as insanely high-maintenance when he’s a marine mammal as he is when he’s a human.  No, the Penguins don’t have any man-eaters or flaky marine mammals, but…. Scratch that.  They definitely do have man-eaters (although theirs aren’t actually dangerous to the staff) and a flaky marine mammal.  In fact, the biggest man-eater and the flaky marine mammal are why a facilities guy is in charge of the animal handlers.

 

The Pittsburgh Penguins are home to some of the highest-maintenance animal-transformative players in professional sports.  They have a bullfrog, a couple of rats, and a cocker spaniel, none of which are particularly difficult.  The badger, the penguin and the snow leopard are a different story.  Letang, the bullfrog, changes voluntarily and rarely does so at the rink.  When he does, he just has to be kept out of the therapy pools, as the chlorine isn’t good for him; there’s a large terrarium in the player lounge for his use.  Dupuis and Fleury, the rats, are both involuntary and can both be lured with cheese curds and French fries if necessary.  They respond better to French than English voice commands, so one of Scott’s guys had to take some night classes to manage them.  Fleury sometimes likes to hang out in Letang’s terrarium before home games.  They leave Neal, the cocker spaniel, to Paul Martin to deal with.  Typical of his breed, Nealer-the-cocker is cute as a button, playfully energetic, and dumb as a box of rocks.  Paulie keeps a rope toy and a Penguins leash and collar with his gear, and if Paul’s shoes are a little chewed and sometimes Nealer comes in with marks on his neck that don’t match the Pens collar, no one says anything.

 

Engelland the badger is something of a challenge.  He’s one of the reasons Scott is glad he’s got a former assistant zookeeper on his crew.  Jack is skilled with a catch pole when he needs to be.  Engo shifts to his animal form involuntarily, and he tends to do so under stress.  He can change himself back, but first he has to calm down, and for that he needs to be left alone in a quiet, dark space.  Jack, Scott’s chief assistant, has the job of ensuring that he’s safe and left alone.  At Southpointe or Consol, that’s easy enough; they’ve actually built soundproofed boxes in both facilities.  All Jack has to do is steer Engo in the right direction, then wait with some clothing for him to put on after he’s changed back. When the boxes aren’t in use, he cleans them, makes sure there’s fresh bedding, and that there’s dirt for Engo to dig in if he wants to.  On the road, Jack’s job is to make sure the portable box is set up, and to liaise with the host team’s wranglers regarding safety procedures.  Engo hasn’t ever gone after another transformed player, but with the number of smaller mammals in the NHL, particularly rodents, they can’t be too careful.  For all that the Hurricanes’ wranglers’ room is done up like Caddyshack, it wouldn’t be funny if Engo went after one of the Staal-gophers or Skinner-the-chipmunk. 

 

(When Jordy was still a Pen, Scott had a hilarious conversation with Papa Staal about the dangers of sod farming with gophers in the family.  It was Henry who clued him in to the brothers’ love of chasing golf balls, which Scott used to lure and corral Jordy when he’d change.  Really, sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.)

 

The two really challenging transformatives are, unsurprisingly, Sid and Geno.  As one might expect, Sidney Crosby can control his transformation.  This is extremely fortunate for Scott and his team, because Sid is a snow leopard.  At nearly 160 pounds and with a vertical leap that takes him over the Southpointe glass, he’s almost impossible to contain if he doesn’t want to be contained. Sometimes he wants to cut loose, so he has Scott lock him in the rink.  That way, he can safely transform and run through the rink like it’s his own personal playground (which it is): Scott has even rigged up a remote system to throw retriever-dog training “geese” from the seats.  The plastic-and-foam birds never last long, but Sid has a blast chasing them across the ice.

 

Rink-running is reserved for Southpointe; at Consol, Sid has his own room.  It’s under the bleachers near the Zamboni entrance to the rink, and it’s refrigerated.  The interior of the room is built to look like a craggy mountainside, terrain where a real snow leopard would feel at home.  There’s a cave, boulders, some fake scrub, and even a small flowing stream.  There’s also a cupboard where Sid can leave his belongings while he’s changed.  The Penguins commissioned a special machine from an industrial kitchen equipment manufacturer that is essentially a super-sized shave ice and crushed ice maker, which they use to make the “snow” that covers much of Sid’s hideaway.  It takes Scott and one of his assistants eight hours to make enough “snow” to lay down a base at the beginning of the season, and at least an hour to touch it up after that.  If the room wasn’t a snow leopard habitat, it would be a decent-sized (if oddly shaped) studio apartment.  Sid’s pre-game routine includes a nap in his room, so it’s always kept prepared for him.

 

Professional sports teams will go to great lengths to keep their stars comfortable, as humans or as animals.  For Sid as a rookie, the Penguins had custom-built a cold-weather habitat that could be put on a trailer and towed, or shipped on their aircraft as cargo.  Scott’s main job was to keep the habitat functioning and ready for use.  When the team wasn’t traveling, in the years before Consol was constructed, the habitat – a small converted shipping container – was parked outside the back entrance to the Igloo.  It’s significantly smaller than Sid’s room at Consol, but it’s cozy (for a shipping container that’s kept at 30 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

When Geno was drafted to the Penguins, he provided the standard transformation disclosure information that all people do as part of the typical hiring process.  He changes involuntarily, and he changes into a penguin.  But he’s not the Emperor or King penguin that most fans would expect: he’s a rock-hopper penguin.  He’s not very tall or very broad, but what he lacks in stature he more than makes up for in plumage.  He has long, yellow feathers that flow back from his temples like racing stripes, and the top of his head is covered with shorter black feathers that stick straight up.  His bright red eyes complete the manic look.

 

The first time Geno changed as a Penguin was after his first home game in his rookie year.  Scott’s assistant Jimmy was in the locker room, making a first pass to collect discarded gear and sweaters, when he heard a god-awful racket out of the showers, human yelling and animal squawking.  Moments later a small black-and-white body came careening out of the shower area and rolled onto the rubberized flooring of the locker room.  Jimmy was already on his radio, calling Scott to the locker room when Sid emerged from the shower, wrapped in a towel and looking worriedly at the penguin, which was now trying to right itself. 

 

Scott arrived just as Sid bent over and grabbed the penguin around its body, setting it upright quickly as it started to bite at his hands.  “Geno!  Stop that!”

 

Remarkably, the penguin stopped and looked up at Sid.  Normally when humans transform, they become nearly as intellectually capable as the animals they transform to; many pure involuntary transformatives won’t respond to verbal commands from anyone but close family. 

 

The distraction allowed Scott to step in and pick Geno up, swaddling him in a towel as he did so.  Geno squawked and struggled to get down, but Scott had a firm grip.  He carried him, still squawking, into the trainer’s room and put him in the ice bath, ignoring the trainer’s “hey!” of indignation.  Geno splashed happily for a few minutes, until Sid, now dressed, walked into the room and looked around for him.  Scott had stayed to keep an eye on Geno (and to let the trainer yell at him for ruining Sergei Gonchar’s ice bath).

 

“Uh, Scott?”

 

“Yeah, Sid?”

 

“Do you want to put him in my room?  It’s cold enough and that way he wouldn’t be bothering the trainers in here all evening…”

 

“Good idea, Sid.  Thank you.  I appreciate it.”  But Scott couldn’t re-capture Geno to move him.  He was about to go get the net he used to catch Letang when Sid stepped up to the bath and spoke sharply. 

 

“Geno!”  The penguin popped up from the bottom of the tub, where he had been hiding from Scott, and peered at Sid.

 

“Out, Geno! Come on, we’re going now.  Out!”  Sid made a “get up and come with me” motion with his hands and turned to walk out of the trainer’s room.  Geno-the-penguin tried to pull himself out of the bath, but his flippers couldn’t get purchase on the slick sides of the tub.  He squawked his displeasure and splashed back as Sid turned toward him.

 

“Hold on a minute, I’ll pick you up out of there.  You’d better not bite me.”  Sid reached in and grabbed him around the middle again, lifting him clear of the tub and putting him down on the floor.  Geno gave a vigorous full-body shake and flapped his wings a couple of times, looking up at Sid as if to say, “Okay, let’s go.”

 

Sid turned and walked away, toward his room just outside the back entrance to the rink.  Geno followed for a few steps, with Scott bringing up the rear, but then Geno was distracted by something and turned aside to investigate.  It was an abandoned roll of tape, but it rolled when he poked at it with his beak, so that made it a toy!  Geno forgot all about following Sid, and Scott’s efforts to herd him in Sid’s wake were just part of this fun new game he had discovered. 

 

The game ended when a very large cat appeared in his path and smacked down the roll of tape with a paw as big as his head.  Geno froze and the cat lowered its muzzle to his face.  The snow leopard and the penguin were standing nose-to-beak in a back hallway of the Igloo, and Scott didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t have anything with which to separate them, and he didn’t want to put himself between them, but he stepped forward to do just that when Sid’s head came up and pinned him with a look.  Scott backed off, and Sid nimbly jumped right over Geno and landed behind him, turning around in mid-air so that he was facing where he had just been standing.  Geno tried to turn around to keep him in sight but couldn’t quite make it, squawking and wobbling and flapping his flippers.  He got turned and regained his balance just in time for Sid to head-butt him in the chest, pushing him back down the hallway. 

 

Scott hurried to get in front of Geno and Sid, with Sid now very effectively herding Geno and keeping him focused on getting to the end of the hall.  Scott opened the door to the arena, letting both animals out into the Pittsburgh night.  He then hustled to the shipping container and pulled open the door.  Sid prodded Geno up the low ramp and into the trailer, then followed him in.  He turned to look at Scott, then turned away with a swish of his tail and jumped onto one of his fake-rock perches.  Scott could see Geno jumping amongst the smaller fake boulders on the floor.  He closed the door and went to get Sid’s clothing, as well as something for Geno to wear when he changed back.

 

At the end of the evening, Scott went to check on his stars.  Sid’s car was still in the lot, so he at least was probably still in the habitat; he was already in the habit of spending the night transformed after a bad loss.  Their clothing was still in the bin outside the door.  He opened the door carefully, not wanting to startle them.  He peered into the dimly-lit space, and nearly missed seeing them: the penguin and the snow leopard, curled together in the shadow of a fiberglass boulder, Sid on his side and Geno upright, Geno’s head tucked under a flipper and his body surrounded by Sid’s limbs and tail, asleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Shortly after Sid's room at Consol was completed, Scott realized that they were going to need to make some changes. The room was Sid's, and he was the one who let Geno in to play in the water feature whenever he changed. (The "stream" was a really excellent penguin water slide.) When Sid went out with his concussion, Scott and his crew found that Geno was kind of a pill to manage: he didn't like to be herded and didn't want to be anywhere but Sid's room. He knew where the room was and would try to bite anyone who tried to keep him out of it. So, Scott put in an insulated penguin flap, and started stocking a second cupboard with Geno-sized clothing. He also added some loose rocks to the terrain, so that Geno could work on a nest for Sid. By the time he was well enough to change again, Sid had the most comfortable penguin nest a snow leopard could ever want.
> 
> \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This is what Geno looks like: http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/wp-content/uploads/bghst/m/mick/19667.jpg
> 
> And here’s Sid: http://www.felineconservation.org/uploads/pwmj_sleet_got_snow_for_christmas.jpg


End file.
